Suspect's parents sentenced for not stopping a `runaway train'
The first parents convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison Tuesday as a Michigan judge lamented missed opportunities that could have prevented their teenage son from possessing a gun and killing four students in 2021.
“These convictions are not about poor parenting,” Oakland County Judge Cheryl Matthews said. “These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”
The hearing in a crowded, tense courtroom was the climax of an extraordinary effort to make others besides the 15-yearold attacker criminally responsible for a school shooting.
Jennifer and James Crumbley did not know Ethan Crumbley had a handgun — he called it his “beauty” — in a backpack when he was dropped off at Oxford High School. But prosecutors convinced jurors the parents still played a disastrous role in the violence.
The Crumbleys were accused of not securing the newly purchased gun at home and acting indifferently to signs of Ethan's deteriorating mental health, especially when confronted with a chilling classroom
drawing earlier that same day.
The Crumbleys earlier this year were convicted of involuntary manslaughter.
“The blood of our children is on your hands, too,” Craig Shilling said during Tuesday's sentencing hearing, wearing a hoodie with the image of son Justin Shilling on his chest.
Nicole Beausoleil, the mother of shooting victim Madisyn Baldwin, told the Crumbleys they had failed at parenting.
“While you were purchasing a gun for your son and leaving it unlocked,” said Beausoleil, one of a handful of Oxford family members who spoke in court, “I was helping her finish her college essays.”
Prosecutor Karen McDonald
asked the judge to stretch beyond the sentencing guidelines and order a minimum 10-year prison sentence.
Defense attorneys sought to keep the Crumbleys out of prison, noting they have already spent nearly 2 1/2 years in jail after failing to meet a $500,000 bond after their arrest.
They will get credit for that jail time and become eligible for parole after serving 10 years in custody. If release from prison is denied, they could be held for up to 15 years.
Five deputies in the suburban Detroit courtroom stood closely over the couple and more lined the walls. James Crumbley, 47, had been recorded in jail making threats toward McDonald.